#minecraft hoglins

what if the reason piglins have hoglins in stables bastions is because certain breeds of hoglin have been domesticated but we as the player can't tell the difference, and while the piglins that take care of the hoglins can recognize you as a friend due to the gold you wear, their hoglins mainly identify their surroundings through smell and because the player doesn't smell like a piglin, the hoglins recognize you as a threat and try to get rid of you. this would lead to hoglins occupying a role as both a guard animal and a meat animal, and I imagine different breeds would act differently? like imagine you're a piglin and your bastion owns both smaller, more agile guard hogs for defense, and larger slower fatter hogs for meat

wild hoglins aren't domesticated or safe to be around, so when a party of piglins comes across a wild hoglin or, void forbid, a herd of them, the piglins tend to kill the wild hoglins to minimize the threat of returning along that route in the future

this ties into my personal headcanons about piglins having a rather complex society(much moreso than we see in the game) because it's interesting to me? like yeah I think they're doing farming and ranching; I just also think that would be a nightmare to represent in-game and people would accuse it of being "not minecraft-y" so it would never be added but it's fun to think about. additionally I think piglins likely have some sort of farming methods to both feed their animals as well as supplements to their own diets(I think they're omnivores with a preference for meat actually, given we see them hunting hoglins in-game but they're based off of pigs and pigs do eat plant matter. and also everything else but I digress)

there isn't necessarily a ton of evidence for this in-game but what I remember for this off the top of my head is that stables bastions have hoglins(the naming of stables bastions may actually also imply hoglins taking a role similar to oxen and similar animals; used to haul materials and/or ride perhaps?), and having a certain kind of animal in your place of living seems like something that would be at least somewhat domesticated. also, parties of piglins that spawn out and about will team up to hunt nearby hoglins and celebrate when they win. piglins also pick up any dropped meat from hoglins they kill, which is where I got the idea of them eating meat! they don't pick up the leather dropped from these hoglins, according to the good minecraft wiki(minecraft.wiki for anyone curious)

generally, yeah, I think piglins probably domesticated certain breeds of hoglin. I think the easiest to work into existing lore would be hoglins domesticated for their meat, and hoglins domesticated as beasts of burden like oxen(and used to haul materials like food or building materials around)

So like it’s very obvious that there was an ancient civilization that died out for one reason or another, leaving only the things they created in their wake. And this is obvious by the Temples, Sand/Ocean/Jungle, the shipwrecks, the igloos, the mineshafts, all these buildings they leave behind.

Because it certainly wasn’t the villagers who built them.

Ages ago there was this theory that this ancient civilization was driven out by something dangerous and powerful, I think this theory was MatPats?

So here’s what I’m thinking happened. Because of the different architecture style of all the temples and such it’s easy to assume that there were many different cultures In this ancient civilization. And I think it’s very likely that they were at war. The reason being? Creepers.

Think about it- gunpowder is not something that forms in nature, it has to be specifically filtered and put together for it to properly form gunpowder. Take into account that Creepers are completely silent at all times until they’re close enough to you to explode. And they don’t seem to have any conscious thought other than to kamikaze a human. Now there is the possibility that they could have been made by the Pillagers, but they don’t seem to have any scientific capabilities and are more focused on barbaric tactics, so that means there could have been wars going on between the ancient cultures, and that could explain why the only cities we find are the ones that are destroyed in the ocean and the ancient cities underground, they all destroyed themselves leaving only the sacred temples. Additionally Creepers don’t have a will to live, they don’t try to survive, and if they were formed via evolution, they would have a will to live and not solely explode upon seeing a person, further indicating they were genetically created. At some point during this time, they discovered the Nether.

All those incomplete Nether portal ruins you can find, likely remnant of what they built. So they built these portals and traveled the Nether. Discovering all the things it has to offer. I believe they are the ones who built the Nether fortresses, and discovered that Nether Wart and Blaze rods can be used to create powerful elixirs and potions, so they breed the blaze, making them an active part of the temple, and have the little Nether wart farms. And the fact they have been to the Nether would explain why chiseled red sandstone has the Wither carved into it. So we all know that the Piglins and hoglins seem to carry an innate zombifying virus that triggers whenever they enter the overworld.

So after some time of peace, something happens, and a human is infected by the virus that the Piglins carry. The virus is devastating and spreads far too quickly. All the zombies we see in game are very clearly human, and there’s a clear distinction between zombie humans and zombie villagers. So all the zombies we encounter are likely remnants of those ancient civilizations. The portal ruins we see all over the place? They weren’t failed portals, they were intentionally destroyed to try and slow down the infection rate. Eventually there is left with only a few handfuls of survivors, so they flee below ground, down into the depths where they built their new cities. The Ancient Cities that were added in the latest update. I believe they lived here for some time in relative peace just surviving in the depths. But then their newest and possibly oldest foe came. The Warden. The skulk spread incredibly fast and far, the Warden leaving little left alive in its wake. So once more the ancient people had to flee. They fled and built the Stronghold, one final safe haven against the monsters outside. But they knew it was only temporary. Driven by fear and a will to keep going, the people who remained of the ancient civilization fled into the End.

The ancient civilization began building the began building their new home there. Building the strange and towering End Cities and the flying ships we see there. They invent Shulkers as a security measure to defend themselves. There’s only one food source that can be found in the End. Chorus fruit. The fruit that when eaten causes you to teleport randomly. I believe that after centuries of a diet of this fruit and the harsh conditions of their new living environment. The ancient civilization evolved, transforming into what we know today as Endermen.